CHAPEL HILL — North Carolina football coach Larry Fedora didn’t mask what would happen following the season finale against Maryland.

Once the Tar Heels put the finishing touches on a 45-38 victory and an 8-4 season without the possibility for a postseason, Fedora knew his team would be tempted by hypothetical questions.

“Now you sit around at this point and you start talking about ‘What if?’ ” Fedora said.

By finishing with a 5-3 record in the Atlantic Coast Conference and on top of the Coastal Division, the Tar Heels’ biggest ‘What if?’ had been months, if not a year, in the making.

Without the postseason ban, North Carolina would have played Florida State last weekend for the chance to go to a Bowl Championship Series game. Instead, a Georgia Tech team with two fewer victories represented the Coastal Division and lost to Florida State 21-15.

But that didn’t lessen the Tar Heels’ celebration of their place atop the division’s standings. Instead, as junior quarterback Bryn Renner suggested, it can serve as the first building block for next season.

“Our ultimate goal is to play for a (regular-season) conference title and we accomplished that. It’s kind of bittersweet,” Renner said. “We can take a lot of things into the offseason for next season.”

Never mind the fact that other than Florida State and Clemson, North Carolina is the only other team in the ACC to average more than 40 points per game.

Forget that Georgia Tech had to apply for a bowl eligibility waiver — which was accepted — because a loss to Florida State put the Yellow Jackets under .500 (6-7) and ineligible for a bowl under normal circumstances.

In a league that never found a team to bridge the gap between its top two teams and the rest, a game between Florida State and North Carolina for the ACC championship could have provided that gauge for Fedora in his first season.

Instead, those questions will remain unanswered.

“We wish we could have played in it, but we knew before the season that we wouldn’t be able to play in a postseason game,” receiver Erik Highsmith said. “We just wanted to go out and spoil it for others.”

With their role as spoilers completed, the Tar Heels move into the offseason.

For Fedora, the coach goes to work on filling his first full recruiting class with what he said would be “25-hour” days. For North Carolina’s underclassmen, such as Renner, freshman receiver Quinshad Davis and others, it’s an early start on offseason workouts.

And North Carolina’s senior class, much of whom has played in bowl games for the last three seasons, will have its first December without football.

Page 2 of 2 - Just don’t expect much animosity from those seniors.

“Honestly, that doesn’t bother me too much,” senior offensive lineman Jonathan Cooper said. “I feel like we did a great job as a team, we were very resilient and we fought through all the adversity we had this season and played our butts off. Not being able to go to a bowl game was out of our hands."